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No Pretense. Well, Hardly Any.

"I WANTED an unassuming way to slip into the shallow end of the pool of New York City restaurants," wrote Gabrielle Hamilton in an essay in Food & Wine magazine about her decision to open the restaurant Prune in 1999. "I wanted to cook for my neighbors."

Prune did not quite work out that way. Sure, Ms. Hamilton's downtown neighbors came. But so did uptown strangers and pilgrims from outside the city and even the state. So did other chefs and food writers, enchanted by the lack of pretense in Ms. Hamilton's preparations, by the simplicity and gusto of what she served: sardines on Triscuits, warm monkfish liver on toast, pâté sandwiches and deviled eggs.

Prune quickly morphed from adorable notion into formidable influence, a small restaurant with a large footprint. The proof was in the emulation, in the other restaurants that rightly began to accord homey cooking as much honor as haute cuisine: not a novel ethic, but one that Ms. Hamilton gave fresh currency.

The proof was also in the long line outside the door late Sunday morning, when I most recently visited Prune, and at a corner table inside. There sat Chelsea Clinton, huddled over what looked like Prune's Dutch-style pancake.

Smart woman. That pancake is as big as a Frisbee, fluffy as a cloud and so ethereally appealing that Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth would probably fight to the sticky death over the privilege of coating it. But real maple syrup beat them to it.

With brunch, as with much else, Prune does not mess around. It offers about a dozen variations of the bloody mary, including one with lime, tequila and smoked chipotle that tastes like the torrid love affair of an angry tomato and a margarita. Each of these bloody marys, our server explained, comes with a glass of Red Stripe beer as a chaser.

A beer chaser? Before noon?

"Goooooood morning!" she trumpeted by way of explanation and response. And a very good morning it indeed turned out to be.

It is easy to see why Prune is so widely and fervently loved. It has mirth to spare, moxie to burn. It listens to its own muse and operates by a credo of whimsical indulgence.

Consider another of the brunch options, the Monte Cristo. Prune takes a familiar and therefore instantly comforting triple-decker sandwich of ham, turkey and Swiss cheese and ups the ante. The sandwich is battered with egg and milk and briefly grilled in butter before being deep-fried. Then, when the sandwich's excesses would seem to have reached their zenith, powdered sugar is sprinkled generously atop it.

Or consider a dinner appetizer of sweetbreads, also battered, also deep-fried. Decadent on their own, they are nonetheless paired with a sauce of bacon, capers, caper juice and copious butter for an ultimate effect that one of my friends exultantly called Kentucky-fried sweetbreads.

When we had finished them and there was nothing left but three buttery capers, a server asked if we were done. We hesitated, at which point she said, "I would take my fingers and go like this," advising us to swipe and lick. That is the Prune way.

But as easy as it is to appreciate Prune, it is just as easy to oversell it. Prune has limitations and frustrations, none of them insignificant.

Dining here can be like a game of Twister, because the roughly 30 seats are so tightly wedged, even by Manhattan standards, that the situation verges on comical. At a corner table one night, three of us had to rise and walk into the vestibule so that our fourth could go to the restroom.

The same attributes that make Prune endearing can also feel like self-conscious shtick. Prune is a mood, and you have to be in it. The servers, all friendly and droll, wear pink shirts that match the menus. There are packages of Alka-Seltzer on the bar at brunch. There is a rigorously enforced no cellphone policy, laudable but perplexing given the din and loud music.

Photo

HOMEY OVER HAUTE: Diners are reflected in a mirror at Prune in the East Village, where brunch is a big draw.Credit
Jennifer S. Altman/The New York Times

"You'll notice we're very lowbrow, and our utensils don't match," one server volunteered. I had not paid that detail much heed, but once I did, I wondered all the more about the prices, which have risen over the years. The average entree is about $25.

The duck is $30, expensive in terms of the ambience of the restaurant and the quality of the dish. Both times I tried it, the roasted breast was extremely tough. The braised leg was stringy, which was also true of braised rabbit legs, another entree. I had the sense that the hordes that almost ceaselessly descend upon Prune sometimes tax the tiny kitchen.

But a whole grilled branzino was terrific, the flesh moist and the presentation blessedly simple. It came with half a lemon to be squeezed over it and coarse salt to be sprinkled atop it. The brief list of entrees was rounded out by a rib-eye, a pork chop and beef short ribs, each done in a fairly straightforward manner, each pleasurable but uneventful.

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Like entrees, desserts were a mixed bag, from a wonderful mix of chocolate and tangerine granitas to a hard, chalky cocoa meringue. But when it came to smaller dishes, listed in the top section of the dinner menu and on a separate page of bar snacks, Prune could seemingly do no wrong.

These dishes included those fabulous sweetbreads; roasted marrow bones served with grilled bread and sea salt; a Parmesan omelet that carried the salty kick of so much of the food; ball-shaped homemade lamb sausages with a pink and juicy core; and a plate of buttered bread, Garrotxa cheese and salted red onion, the makings of the kind of snack you might put together at home at 2 a.m. and enjoy more than anything more fanciful you had eaten that day.

And then there was brunch, which Prune does so well, from expert omelets to a fantastic coddled egg mixed with ribbons of poached chicken and cream. No wonder Ms. Clinton paid a visit.

She sat with a cellphone and a BlackBerry on the table in front of her. This was clearly not the tableau Ms. Hamilton had in mind when she envisioned cooking "for the woman upstairs in my building who sells pot," as she wrote.

RESERVATIONS Call two weeks ahead for prime weeknight times. No reservations for brunch or Sunday dinner.

CREDIT CARDS All major cards.

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Small step up to door and one restroom at same level.

WHAT THE STARS MEAN:(None) Poor to satisfactory* Good** Very good*** Excellent**** ExtraordinaryRatings reflect the reviewer's reaction to food ambience and service, with price taken into consideration. Menu listings and prices are subject to change.